


For We Will Watch

by lisabounce



Category: Provost's Dog - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-15
Updated: 2011-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-26 02:24:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/277610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisabounce/pseuds/lisabounce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the cards have all fallen, those left standing have questions</p>
            </blockquote>





	For We Will Watch

Clary came to us, early in September, some two month past when Beka had returned. Kora and me, we were sitting in the 'Dove, her turning the cards for the orange sellers as worked Prettybone these days and me? I was nursing an ale, listening to the rushers as talked bigger than they were, wondering when I ought shut them down, bring them back to their places again.

It fair gladdens me, some of the news we've had from our folk up on the hill these past weeks. It's a Scanran softness in me, that I dislike the Southern cities such, but my family's serfs were never treated like these Southerners do their slaves and nor yet were those held by Rosto's kin, for all that his father and brothers took their rights from the women and lasses and then some. But Clary brought her sobering reality along with her, rare though it is to see her out from her Sargent's desk of a night (and I am glad of that, for all that I respect her, but one so far from the street Dogs should not walk too closely with the Rogue.)

I cuffed the worst of my fools and not lightly, either. “Leave be, braggart, or I'll have your gems. Mayhap you ought consider following your words with your actions, for I know how Sunday last went down and you, my lad, were trapped eleven hours in that attic, afeared to come down lest that little gixie see you.” I stood and nodded her a greeting, ordering a serving mot bring us food and wine to a private room while Kora gathered her cards and followed us. (The mot she left ought be glad. Kora's truest failing is that she does see true and seldom softens her seeings.)

“Our sorrow for yours, Guardswoman,” Kora murmured and I nodded, bending over the table to water our wine as Clary replied. She's aged a dozen years in the last three. Leaving the streets, leaving what was familiar, has not been good for her. The servers arrived, bearing a platter of swine baked with crab apples, a bowl of stew heavy with cabbage and dill and warmed bread. Rosto has taught his servers to cook in the Scanran fashion, though they keep Southern food too, for the cityfolk. At my nod, they left the platters and I took to tearing bread while Kora served and Clary looked at the food with a deep suspicion, poking at the cabbage with her belt knife.

We exchanged pleasantries and such news as there was and, at length, as casually as ever I'd seen her, Clary asked “Have you seen aught of Beka these past days since she left Mistress Trout's lodgings?”

Kora shrugged. “The weather has been fair awful. Folk have kept to their homes when they're not at work this past week.”

There was truth to her words, even as blue-green light spilled from her hands, warding the walls, floor, door and hearth. My woman burns with a cold fire when she works her gift and it's well for me that she's trained Ersken to be an understanding sort, for I never love her more than at those moments.

“Gods no,” I said. “She's no longer assigned to the Rogue's Happybag.” (As well Goodwin knew, having taken Beka off that duty when she returned without Tunstall. Beka walks the Cesspool, this past two months and it is even odds as to whether this is a mercy or strike against her by Clary.)

Kora shrugged. “My gixies tell me she's a planning a wedding again,” she murmured. “She and Farmer Cape are talking of making things official on All Hallows, to ask the God's blessing.” And as well they ought, with their marriage coming not four months after Holborn was lain in the ground.

Clary nodded. “I've thought as much.” She took a sip of her wine and raised her brows at us. “I would ask something of you both. That Farmer Cape... I've little enough knowledge of him, for all I've sought news from Blue Harbour and Port Caynn.”

Kora's fingers twitched, testing her wards again. “He does what he ought not be able to, for I've seen the measure of his gift. Few mages will glean power as he does, for it bears traces of those who made it and he's not returned that which he stole from his majesty's mages.” She trusts him not at all and for that alone, I grant him no more trust than she does.

“I see.”

“No, Guardswoman, you do not,” she replied. “He takes what is not his,” and Clary's brows quirked at the sight of a mot sworn to the Rogue and talking morality while Kora continued, “and in doing that, he can leech the lifeblood from folk, choosing what flows in to rest where what he took once lay, from the gifted and ungifted alike.”

For what Tunstall did, there's no forgiveness nor yet mercy from the gods but my woman, my man and I, we slaughtered a king in all but name some few years past. Kora and I, we both reached far beyond our stations in life, bearing Rosto to our beds, she a foreigner's daughter and I, a landsman's, both chasing after a lord's son. That, we understand, though neither of us will ever grant such mercy to those as harm children.

“You mean to say...?”

Kora shook her head. “I say nothing. But one's thoughts are scarce different to the gift and if you take from one side, another thing must come in to fill the space. A clever cove, he could control that.”

Clary sighed. “Will you watch Beka for me? I trust him no further that I can spit.”

“Aye.” I said, for in truth we watched her already, for she is more firmly ours than many who oaths to Rosto. It was easy to see in Clary then only an old woman, a mot grieving for a man she knew and loved in her fashion for the better part of twenty year before the Dog reasserted itself.

“We'll do more than watch,” Kora said. “If he's laid an enchanting on her...”

“My thanks,” she said, and stood. We joined her, Kora parting the wards on the room and I followed, hand on my sword hilt. “If you find that he laid his will on Tunstall, I ask that you call me in before doing aught.”

We nodded again. Rosto, Kora and I, we shall be thorough in our seeking, for the trust we place in that mage is worth no more than a clipped copper, though we held our peace till Goodwin came to us.

We're willing to remain silent for now, listening to the spaces around what Beka is duty bound to keep silent on about her hunt, even to us. And one day, perhaps, the four of us will nail Cape's hide to the wall.


End file.
